NRG Oncology Medical Physicists’ Manpower Survey Quantifying Support Demands for Multi-Institutional Clinical Trials

Publication date: Available online 4 February 2018
Source:Practical Radiation Oncology
Author(s): James I Monroe, Karan Boparai, Ying Xiao, David Followill, James M Galvin, Eric E Klein, Daniel Low, Jean M Moran, Haoyu Zhong, Jason W Sohn
PurposeA survey was created by XXXX to assess a medical physicists' percent Full Time Equivalent (FTE) contribution to multi-institutional clinical trials. A 2012 ASTRO report, 'Safety Is No Accident', quantified medical physics staffing contributions in FTE Factors for clinical departments. No quantification of FTE effort associated with clinical trials was included.MethodsTo address this lack of information, the XXXX Medical Physics Subcommittee decided to obtain manpower data from the medical physics community to quantify the amount of time medical physicists spent supporting clinical trials. A survey, consisting of sixteen questions, was designed to obtain information regarding physicists' time spent supporting clinical trials. The survey was distributed to medical physicists at 1996 radiotherapy institutions included on the membership rosters of the five NCTN clinical trial groups.ResultsOf the 451 institutions who responded; fifty percent (226) of the respondents reported currently participating in radiotherapy trials. On average, the designated physicist at each institution spent 2.4 hours (SD: 5.5 hours) per week supervising or interacting with clinical trial staff. On average, 1.2 hours (SD: 3.1 hours), 1.8 hours (SD: 3.9 hours), and 0.6 hours (SD: 1.1 hours) per week were spent on trial patient simulations, treatment plan reviews, and maintaining a DICOM server, respectively. For all trial credentialing activities, physicists spent an average of 32 hours (SD: 57.2 hours) yearly. Reading protocols and supporting dosimetrists, clinicians, and therapists took an average of 2.1 hours (SD: 3.4 hours) per week. Physicists also attended clinical trial meetings, on average, 1.2 hours (SD: 1.9 hours) per month.ConclusionOn average, physicist spent a non-trivial total of 9 hours per week (0.21 FTE) supporting an average of 10 active clinical trials. This time commitment indicates the complexity of radiotherapy clinical trials and should be taken into account when staffing radiotherapy institutions.



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